The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance will win a majority of parliamentary seats in the Lok Sabha elections to be held in seven phases starting April 11, a nationwide opinion poll has shown.
The India TV-CNX opinion poll, telecast after Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora announced the election schedule, showed that the coalition led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi could win 285 seats, which is only 13 seats more than the midway mark in the 543-seat Lok Sabha. In the 2014 General Elections, the BJP won an absolute majority of 282 seats. The BJP’s tally is predicted to come down to 238 seats, 34 short of the majority.
The opinion poll predicted that the Opposition Congress may increase its tally from 44 to 82 this time, with the United Progressive Alliance winning 126 seats. Other parties, which includes the Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Trinamool Congress, Telangana Rashtra Samithi, regional outfits and independents are projected to win in 132 seats.
Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress is expected to win 30 seats, Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party 18, Mayawati’s BSP 16, YSR Congress 22, and the TRS and Biju Janata Dal 14 seats each. The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam is projected to win 12 seats and the Left Front six.
The opinion poll was conducted between March 1 and March 7 in 193 out of the 543 parliamentary constituencies. Of a total voter sample of 38,600 respondents, 20,455 were men and 18,145 were women.
‘NDA tally down to 264’
However, the ABP News-CVoter survey predicted that the NDA’s tally will decrease to 264, with the BJP winning 220 of those. The UPA could win 141 seats, with 86 of them going to the Congress. Neither alliance will be able to touch the magic mark of 272, it said.
The survey claimed that regional parties will win a large number of seats, 138, and play an important role in forming the government.
The survey said the NDA’s vote share will increase by 10 percentage points to 41%. The UPA is expected to increase its vote share to 31% and other parties to 28%.
If elections were to be held in Uttar Pradesh today, the Bahujan Samaj Party-Samajwadi Party alliance will emerge victorious in 47 seats, said the survey. The two major alliances will see massive electoral losses, with the NDA winning 29 seats and the UPA limited to four.
The NDA was projected to win 21 seats in the southern states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka. The UPA could win 63 seats, with other parties winning from 45, according to the survey.
The survey was conducted between February and the first week of March 1 across all the 543 constituencies. The sample size was more than 50,000 voters.
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